Sunday, October 19, 2008

Today, walking home along the Plas Crug, it dawned on me that autumn had arrived. Like spring earlier in the year I'd noticed it coming - the green of the leaves on Penglais hill has been slowly draining away - but suddenly I'm aware that it is here, now; leaves are blowing about the streets, the flags on the prom have been taken down, and the light is increasingly slipping from each day.

So much is happening back home at the moment - engagements and weddings, babies, sickness - that Anth and I are feeling curiously unsettled here. It is good to be here and out of the innumerable places we could be we do feel that it is the right place to be. But we don't have any roots in this place with its strange rhythms and practices. For me it is all too easy to throw myself into work and into the immediacy of teaching and administrative tasks. But then anything concerned with the longer term gets pushed to the periphery. This is a concern.